Tuesday's Overlooked TV: Combat!

(This post originally appeared in somewhat different form on December 7, 2006.)

COMBAT! was one of my favorite TV shows as a kid. I watched it nearly every week during its original run in the Sixties. Then during the Eighties I saw some of the episodes again in syndicated reruns and still enjoyed them. Now, I'm glad to report that the series still holds up pretty well. The production values are high, the black-and-white photography is really good, and the acting, writing, and direction are all top-notch. Vic Morrow, who usually played villains (and was good at it, too), is excellent here as the stalwart Sergeant Chip Saunders. Rick Jason as Lieutenant Hanley is kind of a stiff (Jason was intended to be the star of the series, but Morrow eclipsed him within a few episodes), but I don't mind him too much. The supporting cast, playing the GIs in Saunders's squad, are all great, although the best of the bunch, Jack Hogan as Kirby and Dick Peabody as Littlejohn, are barely visible in the early episodes I just watched.

In fact, that's the problem with the early episodes, many of which were directed by Robert Altman. They tend to concentrate on one or two characters, and I enjoy the later episodes more because they're more of an ensemble effort. I really like the interaction of the various squad members. But some of the early ones are still really good, like the second episode, "Any Second Now", which was directed by Altman and features Hanley trapped in a French church with an unexploded German bomb and a shaky British bomb disposal officer who's losing his nerve. This is a fine episode. I hadn't seen it since it was first broadcast in 1963, but I still remembered it after nearly 43 years.

I don't know when or if I'll get around to watching any more of these, but I'm glad to know that a show I liked a lot back then was actually pretty good. That hasn't always been the case with my old favorites.

(Update: I watched a couple of episodes a few weeks ago, and they still hold up very well. I think COMBAT! is the best fictional TV series ever about World War II.)

Renegade's Revenge - Jack Badelaire

I've enjoyed Jack Badelaire's action and war novels, so I was eager to read his first Western. RENEGADE'S REVENGE is a short novel set during the Civil War and its aftermath. Like many families, the Miller brothers are separated by the war, with Caleb fighting for the Union and his twin brother Caleb and their older brother Paul joining up with a band of Confederate guerrillas. Inevitably, in the last days of the war, they find themselves on different sides of the same battle, and the outcome is a tragic one when Caleb Miller is taken prisoner and executed by David's brutal commander.

The war is over soon after that, and David and Paul find themselves back on the family farm making an uneasy truce with each other. David regards what his captain did as murder, not an act of war, and he and Paul decide to sell the farm and track down the captain and the brutal sergeant who actually killed Caleb. They know that doing so will make them outlaws, but they don't care. They're going to avenge Caleb's death no matter what it takes.

It's a classic set-up for a Western revenge novel, and Badelaire handles it beautifully. His prose is crisp and assured and flows very well. He has a nice touch with the characters, creating a tough-minded but sympathetic protagonist in David Miller, a couple of truly despicable villains, and vivid supporting characters including a former Union officer haunted by the past. The frequent action scenes are quite effective and lead up to a satisfying showdown.

RENEGADE'S REVENGE is a top-notch traditional Western that makes me hope it won't be Badelaire's only entry in the genre. I'm looking forward to seeing what he comes up with next. If you're a Western fan, you definitely should give this one a try.

RENEGADE'S REVENGE e-book on Amazon

RENEGADE'S REVENGE paperback on Amazon

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Public Enemy, December 1935

This is the first issue of a short-lived pulp series trying to cash in on the popularity of G-Men in movies and popular fiction. The hero of the lead novels in these issues is Lynn Vickers, Agent G-77 of the FBI. He's the usual clean-cut pulp G-Man, but I've read a few of the novels and remember them as being pretty entertaining. The author, Bryan James Kelley, was really George A. MacDonald, who wrote some of the Phantom Detective novels. He may well have written Dan Fowler novels for the pulp G-MEN, too. I don't recall for sure about that. But his Lynn Vickers novels, though formulaic, are not bad. I think they're scheduled to be reprinted sometime in the future.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: The Masked Rider Western Magazine, April 1934

This is the first issue of the pulp featuring The Masked Rider, a character pretty obviously inspired by The Lone Ranger. Or was he? I seem to recall reading speculation that Oscar Schisgall's novel THE BLACK CABALLERO was written as a stand-alone and quickly turned into a series after the success of the Lone Ranger radio program. I don't know, but I believe this is the only Masked Rider novel by Schisgall, which makes me think it's possible he didn't intend to write any sequels and the publisher bought the rights to the characters from him.

At any rate, the series ran for 13 issues from its original publisher, Ranger Publications (Ranger...hmmm), then went away for a few months before returning from Better Publications, one of the imprints of Ned Pines' Thrilling Group. It had a good long run there, lasting until 1953. Quite a few of the novels were reprinted in paperback by Curtis Books during the Seventies. I've read a number of them and enjoyed most of them.

The early Masked Rider stories from Ranger Publications, although featuring the same characters, Wayne Morgan (aka The Masked Rider) and his Yaqui sidekick Blue Hawk, are somewhat different in tone from the later ones, based on the one or two I've read. In those stories, The Masked Rider is more of a Shadow-like character, often manipulating the action from behind the scenes.

The first three novels in the series have been reprinted by Altus Press. I hope to have a chance to read them soon.

Forgotten Books: Dead Cat Bounce - Norman Green)

(I seem to be in a stretch of not having time to read much except the books I'm editing, so here's another rerun, this one from October 18, 2006. It's pretty appropriate, though, since I haven't heard much about Norman Green, nor read any more of his books myself, since I wrote this post seven and a half years ago.)

I didn't really intend for it to work out that way, but this is the third novel in a row I've read about professional criminals. First was the unnamed con man/narrator of David Dodge's THE LAST MATCH, then the Dolly family from Daniel Woodrell's WINTER'S BONE, and now Stoney, Fat Tommy, and Tuco, a trio of scam artists operating in New York City and New Jersey. The protagonist of this one is Stoney, a likable guy despite his profession. Estranged from his wife and two teenage children, Stoney is trying to clean up his act by quitting drinking. He has no plans to give up being a grifter, though, which is good because his special talents at crime, along with those of his two partners, come in very handy when some secrets about his family are revealed and danger threatens his loved ones.

Some books come out of nowhere and surprise you. I'd never heard of Norman Green, despite the fact that he's published four other well-received crime novels, including SHOOTING DR. JACK, which introduced Stoney, Fat Tommy, and Tuco. This is a perfectly fine urban hardboiled crime yarn with a suitably twisty plot, but what elevates it to an even higher level are Green's perceptive portraits of the characters involved in that plot. His heroes are borderline losers who are trying, sometimes with success and sometimes not, to hang on to their dignity and find something worth living for, and they come up against some suitably psychopathic villains. Green's dialogue is excellent, and he's as good as anyone I've read lately at getting to the heart of things with a few well-crafted lines. This is highly recommended and one of the best books I've read all year.

(Indeed, it made my Top Ten in 2006.)

Zombies from the Pulps!: The Corpse Master - Seabury Quinn

Unlike H.P. Lovecraft, who authored only a few stories that I've read so far, and Henry S. Whitehead, who I hadn't read at all, I'm pretty familiar with the work of Seabury Quinn, the next author in ZOMBIES FROM THEPULPS! I've read probably two dozen of the stories in his long-running series about occult detective Jules de Grandin, maybe more. I'm pretty sure I hadn't read "The Corpse-Master", the de Grandin story in this collection, though.

This yarn, originally published in the June 1929 issue of WEIRD TALES, finds de Grandin, his friend/narrator Dr. Trowbridge, and police detective Lt. Costello investigating a series of brutal murders. The first of these is thought to be a suicide, but de Grandin disposes of that theory pretty quickly. A piece of evidence in a later killing points to a particular criminal, but there's a problem with that: said criminal was executed several weeks earlier. Then de Grandin discovers a previously undetected link between the victims, and that leads him to the killer.

The de Grandin stories are never any great shakes as mysteries, and this one is no exception. But Quinn was pretty good at pacing, and "The Corpse-Master" moves along at a nice clip. He could write atmospherically creepy scenes, too. The de Grandin/Trowbridge relationship is reminiscent of Holmes and Watson, but I've always felt that Quinn was influenced even more by Agatha Christie. Jules de Grandin reminds me very much of Hercule Poirot, and Dr. Trowbridge is a virtual clone of Dr. Hastings, the narrator of many of the Poirot novels.

"The Corpse-Master" is an entertaining tale with a very effective final line. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movie: Fired Up!

(This post originally appeared June 21, 2009.)

Crass, crude, silly, predictable teen sex comedy about a couple of football players going to cheerleader camp to chase girls. And I laughed all the way through it and thoroughly enjoyed it. (Big surprise there, eh?) Seriously, if you can say such a thing about a movie like this, the script is considerably smarter than you might expect. Worth checking out if you're in the mood for some lightweight entertainment, which I usually am.

Monday Morning Digest Magazine: Imagination, October 1950

For some reason I never saw copies, used or new, of the science fiction digest IMAGINATION or its sister magazine IMAGINATIVE TALES when I was growing up. They just weren't around my part of the country. The SF digests I saw and read were GALAXY, IF, ANALOG, every now and then an issue of THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION, and then later, in the late Sixties and early Seventies, AMAZING and FANTASTIC. But about ten years ago, I went on an IMAGINATION/IMAGINATIVE TALES binge, buying copies on eBay and having a great time reading them.

This is the first issue of IMAGINATION, with a cover by Hannes Bok and stories by Chester S. Geier, Kris Neville, and Rog Phillips, among others. I owned a copy of this issue and read it, and while there were other issues I probably enjoyed more, I've never forgotten it.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: All Star Detective, December 1941

I don't really get the appeal of the so-called "hypo" covers, but they were popular at times in the pulps and also with collectors. This one has the requisite pretty girl and stalwart hero, too. I've seen stories by Westmoreland Gray, who wrote the lead novel, but I don't recall ever reading any of them. More familiar names in this issue are Ken Crossen, Wyatt Blassingame, and Dale Clark.

Rough Edges Press Website

Livia's put together a website for Rough Edges Press with information on all the books we've published so far. The last time I counted, we have at least a dozen more books under contract, including three original novels, and I plan to have all of them out by the end of the year. You can check out the website here.